I‘m really tired tonight, having had a rough few hours with my mom, as she obsessed about my brother going out to dinner with friends this evening. She paced and ranted and cried, insisting that he probably drowned or was murdered our was out with some girl and I should call him and don’t I know where he is and who he’s with until I finally just let her go on and on while I turned on my laptop and left a comment over at Ronni’s, where there’s a great piece (and comments) about how the entertainment media still stereotypes “older” individuals.
[Gasp. Gasp.]
However, I can’t call it a day until I post about having a Skype chat with Doug Alder, way up there in Canada. He has a web cam, so I could see him. (I’m not sure I’m ready to mount a web cam here yet; I would have to make sure my hair is combed and I don’t look like I just finished a wearying three hours with my mother.)
I only know Doug from his blog, but talking with him felt as though we were old friends. We just hung out and chatted. It’s happened that way for me before, like when I talked to Jeneane Sessum on the regular phone and later, at various times, had a chance to meet other bloggers in person :Betsy Devine, Halley Suitt, Frank Paynter, and Dave Rogers.
Now that Doug has helped me get more comfortable with Skype, I’m going to make plans to talk with Ronni. She’s up in Maine.
But for now, yawn….

PhoneCon, Blogblab, call it whatever you want, but make every effort to be there.
Jeneane lit the Phone Con fire, and now Ronni is burning to launch an Elderblogger PhoneCon.
On October 24, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Ronni will host a blogblab fest for anyone who might like to join in.
Get the offical info here and check in with Time Goes By to keep up with the pre-blab chatter.
Many of us know each other from our blog “voices.” Ronni’s blogblab will give us a chance to hear the voices behind the voices.
I’ll be there, probably even relieving Ronni’s hosting responsibilities every now and then.
Got my Skype. Got my headset. I’m clearing my throat and clearing my calendar (such that it is.)
‘Hope to hear you there as well.

Two posts over at Blogsisters are worth your time. Both are about how important it is to connect with other people in a meaningful way.
This one called “Look Them in the Eye and Smile.”
The other requires both looking and listening, and it actually made me choke up a little.
I send (((H))) to you all.

No, this post is not about my mother. It’s about letting go of stuff. Physical stuff. My stuff.
My brother is cleaning out his basement, and I still have stuff in there left from when I moved here more than a year ago. One of the boxes held what I came to think of as my “professional portfolio,” e.g. many of the articles, grant proposals, profiles, etc. etc. that I had been paid to write over the course of my professional career. I kept them in case I needed to look for another job. I never intended to spend 20 years with, and retire from, the state’s Education Department.
Tonight I threw it all away. It no longer matters that one of my funded proposals was used by the National Science Foundation as a model. It no longer matters that the Chairman of the Biochemistry Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute sent me a note thanking me for turning my lengthy interview with him into a well-written and interesting profile. And so into the trash went everything I wrote for other people that got them what they wanted. All of that no longer matters.
What I did save was a box of stuff about my kids — newpaper articles, writings, report cards, and, suprisingly, my son’s (that’s b!X) assessment report from his year at a Montessori Pre-School some thirty-three years ago. What his teacher said about him then is pretty much what those who know him would probably say about him now. Except maybe for one thing — which might or might not still be true: “frequently bursts into song.”
When my daughter and her family come to visit here in a few weeks, I will give her what I have saved about her. It’s time for her to begin amassing her own box documenting her history that will get stored in her basement.
My brother tells me that I have one last box in his basement that is labelled “craft stuff.” I have no idea what’s in it, but I’m readying myself to let it go.

Driving home through the mountain dusk, I glimpse, out of my eye’s corner, a young stag waiting between the tree line and the road. He is the color of shadows, and it is a miracle that I notice him standing there, still as the mountain. I slow down, look into his eyes that are looking into mine. At moments like this, I really do know what the word “frisson” means.
I am the only car on the road, and he waits until I pass him before he starts to move out. I can see him in the rear view mirror as he trots across the road and through someone’s dark yard. Unlike me, he is singly attentive to where he’s going — unlike me, who is still looking at where I’d been.
I am driving home through the mountain dusk on the way back from taking my mother to Mass. That, in itself, is a minor miracte. She’s been asking to go for several weeks now, but this is the first Saturday that she’s been in any mental shape to get dressed and go out in public.
In my lifetime, I have been to hundreds of Masses in dozens of churches, and it’s been what seems like another lifetime since I connected with the maybe miracle that the Catholic Mass is supposed to imitate. Tonight, I sat and watched the rote rendering of what is supposed to be as moving as any poetry, remembering that, as a child, when I got bored during Mass I would turn the pages in my Sunday MIssal to the Gospels, where I would pick up on the continuing saga of the miracle maker. Unfotrunately, the missals provided in the pews tonight were gospel-less, so I resorted to literally twiddling my thumbs, stopping only to help my mother stand, sit, kneel, stand, sit, kneel….
A stag waiting in the shadows for me to pass — more moving than any Mass.

Speaking in tongues, weeping for salvation, praying for an end to abortion and worshipping a picture of President Bush — these are some of the activities at Pastor Becky Fischer’s Bible camp in North Dakota, “Kids on Fire,” subject of the provocative new documentary, “Jesus Camp.”
“I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places,” Fisher said. “Because, excuse me, we have the truth.”
“A lot of people die for God,” one camper said, “and they’re not afraid.”
“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way.”
— ABC News

It seems to me that the Evangelicals are doing to their children what the fanatic end of the Muslim faith are doing to theirs — preparing them to fight and die for their version of god.
It seems to me that, while everybody can’t be right, everybody can certainly be wrong.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the makers of the Jesus Camp film, made some fundamentally important statements in an interview posted on courttv.com. most notably:

Rachel: I think there is a fear, on my part, of any religious group to have political power. I’m Jewish. If the Jews took over America, if they overtook the government and no one could work on Saturday, I would be uncomfortable with that.
Heidi: There are certain things that are very American, that we all are used to, like massive amounts of American flags flying all over the country. There are certain things you grow up with. One of the things that we grew up with – which is part of the deal with being an American – is the separation of church and state. You hear it since the time you are five. And I think a deviation from that is a mistake. I am definitely aware and concerned that that line is being blurred and that makes me uncomfortable. [But] I don’t blame the evangelicals. They have a plan, they have a vision for how they think America should be, and, like any lobby group, they are going to try to make that happen. The protection should be in place by the three branches of government. I think blaming them is a waste of time.

Personally, I believe that we should blame them for further straining the tenuous line that holds church and state apart. I am often afraid that it’s already too late, what with Bush and his minions continuing to desecrate that sacred boundary.
And I also blame the anti-choice fanatics, like those who are promoting “abstinence only” instead of forthright sex education. The following from the Advoctes for Youth newsletter :

The fact that some U.S. teens report oral and/or anal intercourse while considering themselves ‘virgins’ underscores the fact that lacking information does not prevent young people from having sexual intercourse. It may, however, prevent them from making healthy choices about sexuality.
However, abstinence-only-until-marriage education goes further. It discourages young people from using contraception. It encourages young people to believe that condoms and modern methods of contraception—such as birth control pills, injectable contraception, implants, and the intra-uterine device (IUD)—are far less effective than they, in fact, are. Many abstinence-only-until-marriage programs discuss modern methods of contraception only in terms of failure rates (often exaggerated) and censor information about their correct use and effectiveness. Thus, many of these programs keep young people in ignorance of the very facts that would encourage them to protect themselves when they eventually become sexually active.
* By age 18, about 71 percent of U.S. youth have had sexual intercourse.6
* One recent study found that, by the age of 18, more than 75 percent of young people have engaged in various heavy petting behaviors.7
* Another study found that 25 to 50 percent of teens report having had oral sex.8
* A third study focusing exclusively on adolescent ‘virgins’ (defined in the study as teens who had not experienced vaginal intercourse) found that nearly one-third of respondents reported having participated in masturbation with a partner. In the same study, 10 percent of teens who defined themselves as virgins had participated in oral intercourse and one percent had participated in anal intercourse.9
* Data from a nationally representative survey indicate that, in 1999, 49.9 percent of all high school students have had sexual intercourse. The percentage rises by grade level—38.6 percent of ninth graders have had sexual intercourse compared with 64.9 percent of seniors.10
* By the time young people reach age 20, about 80 percent of males and 76 percent of females have had sexual intercourse.

I remember talking to my daughter about engaging in sexual activity. While I urged abstinence, I also laid out the facts and shared personal experiences. I had no illusions about her making her own choices; what I wanted her to understand were the consequences, both physical and emotional — to understand (again from the newsletter cited above):

* Every individual has dignity and self-worth.
* Sexual relationships should never be coercive or exploitative.
* All sexual decisions have effects or consequences.
* Every person has the right and the obligation to make responsible sexual choices.

My parents never discussed any of that with me. I found out about sex when I was a pre-teen from a magazine article I ripped out of a magazine when my Dad took me to the allergist to get my weekly shot. I remember how nervous I was as I folded up the torn pages and stuck the wad into my waistband.
That was the early 50s, and there were lots of things we didn’t talk about then, believing that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. That wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
Fanatics, whether religious or political (and they’re even more dangerous when they’re both) control their followers by only telling them what they want them to believe, leaving out all kinds of information that might shake their belief. That’s what indoctrination is, what brainwashing is.
And when you start the brainwashing when the individuals are young children — as the Jesuits supposedly say, “Give me the child before the age of seven, and I will give you the man” — you can easily mold fanatics in any way you want.
Are you scared yet? Hah. Watch this. And this.

For I once saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, “Sibyl, what do you want?’ ” she answered, “I want to die.”

I thought of this quote today because my 90 year old mother has been crying a lot lately, and when I ask her why, she says she wants to die. Like the mythic Sybil, she’s in some kind of stasis — neither really living nor finally dying. She spends most of her days walking around her rooms — walking and moving objects and dropping used kleenex like breadcrumbs. While she walks, I sit, busying my hands with crocheting. I’d rather be reading, but I don’t like being interrupted when I’m reading, and she interrupts frequently —

…where is my money? …where is my brother? …are you my mother? …where are my glasses? …where are the men? …are you going dancing? …is it raining?….. ..what should we have for supper? (this last asked an hour after we had supper)

If I run over to my computer to check email or such, she is in her doorway, calling “Elaine….Elaine!” I’m stuck an audio clip from The Graduate.
Back to Sybil. Several years ago, I blogged a piece about Sybils and such that I still like and am reprising below. Interesting enough, while googling for additional information about Sybil, I happened upon a wonderful blog that I had never seen before. It is written by a woman who is indeed a kindred spirit. I will have to find the time and go back to read more of her posts, many of which echo my sentiments exactly.
Meanwhile, here’s my old post about…

Cybill Sibyl Symbols

I am an old woman with a deck of cards
A witch, an Amazon, a Gorgon
A seer, a clairvoyant, a poet.
I have visions of becoming and
I dream in female
–(Barbara Starrett, 1974)

I adored the character that Cybill Shepherd played in her ’90s sitcom. Raunchily relevant in menopausal splendor, she laughed a lot –mostly at herself — loved largely, and dreamed in female. The Lady of Situations.
Sibyl is another gut-grabbing female, one I first encountered the first time I turned to the first page of T.S. Eliot’s “Wastland.” (I still have verses from that epic endlessly looping through my brain: Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant/ has a bad cold nevertheless/ is known to be the wisest woman in Europe/ with a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, / is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor (those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) / Here is Belladonna, the Lady of Rocks, / the lady of situations.)
*****************
For I once saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered, ‘I want to die.”
The quote which prefaces T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland,” “NAM Sibyllam quidem Cumis . . .” is taken from the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, a Roman of the first century B.C.E. The Sybil is a prophetic character who, when granted a wish by Apollo, asked to live for as many years as there are grains of sand in a handful. She forget to ask for eternel youth, however, and is confined to a bottle so as to prevent her body’s disintegration….. The Sibyl, then, is a bit of a paradox: she strove to live eternally yet ended up in constant danger of decay and pain. Her quest for eternity was a failure that Eliot finds terribly important yet terribly dangerous. His goal is not to end up like the Sibyl, but to free her. (quoted from a link that is no longer active)
Cybill and Sybil, symbols of women with strong voices — strong with meaning, with intention, with visions of constant becoming — with guts full of female dreams and hearts used to surviving great tides of sorrow. A lot like the many women bloggers I know and love.

The road I drive into town is edged with farmland. During first days of autumn, I pass so many signs of endings — fields of corn stalks the color of caramel; acres emptied but for the baled rolls of hay; wayside strips of sunflowers, heads bowed low with their burdens of shedding seeds. I am, these days, envious of endings.

It’s Banned Books Week

Would you believe — according to this site, a recently banned book is on computer hyperlinks.

Excerpts from Harper’s Weekly Review, a day late:

In Fernald, Ohio, the Environmental Protection Agency was planning to cart away 5,800 tons of contaminated soil so that a former nuclear production facility could be turned into a “natural” park.
Big box retail stores were employing anthropologists to help sell their products.
Fruit farmers rallied in Washington, D.C., to protest a shortage of low-wage, uninsured, illegal immigrant laborers.
In Maryland, the National Black Republican Association ran radio ads claiming that Martin Luther King was aIand that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan.

The recipient of a penis transplant in Guangzhou, China, requested doctors remove the organ after he and his wife began experiencing “severe psychological problems.”
Australian researchers determined that lesbian women were 10 percent more orgasmic than their straight female counterparts.
A survey showed that rap music fans are unlikely to recycle
Scientists announced that breakfast may not be the most important meal of the day.
Bill and Hillary Clinton both agreed that they were “sick of Karl Rove’s bullshit.”

First of all, liberal hearthrob Keith Olbermann played another riff on the antics of various Bush administration groupies, lending even more power and clarity to Bill Clinton’s much-publicized ripping apart of the position taken by a conservative nework interviewer. It was no surprise that Olbermann again ended his MSNBC program with another of his hell-bent rants, focusing on the distortions that the neocons continue to disseminate in an effort to blame Clinton for the sins of their camp’s leaders.
Former President Clinton’s emergence as a powerful presence at this point in the politics game is no surprise either. What I did find surprising, however, is that I didn’t hear any commentator note that Clinton’s strong, honest, fiery,and decisive statements should serve as a model for the wimpy Democrats as they attempt to dislodge their current conservative opponents.
Those wary Democrats should take as their slogan the words of Happy Harry Hard-on in Pump Up the Volume:

TRUTH IS A VIRUS.
TALK HARD.
STEAL THE AIR.

Here on the home front, it was no surprise that she finally showed her true predatory colors. I caught her with a chipmunk hanging out of her mouth — she looking at me proudly and defiantly; the chipmunk looking definitely dazed and confused. My cat Calli was an apartment cat until we moved out here to the mountains. She loves to meander outside around the house, exploring the flora. This time she found the fauna. The poor creature hung from her mouth, dead motionless weight.
Of course, I yelled at her and grabbed her, and she finally let the critter go. It lay in the grass, white underbelly up for grabs. I carried Calli back into the house and went back to assess the damage. Relieved, I watched as the chipmunk slowly righted itself and took off for the underbrush.
The cat, of course, locked behind the screen door, looked at me in confusion. I’m sure that she was very proud of herself, doing what is natural for a cat. Somewhere in her non-verbal brain, I’m sure she is very confused and disappointed that I was not pleased at her success.
One’s man’s meat…..
Sort of like the Righteous and the rest of us.